photography

Animal Locomotion Plate 650 (detail), Eadweard Muybridge

Photography innovator Eadweard Muybridge is known as a grandfather of motion pictures.

“For this picture, Muybridge lined up a dozen cameras along a path so the horse would trip each shutter as it walked by," explains curator Eric Paddock. "Later in his career, Muybridge cut photographs like this into strips and mounted them on the outside of a rotating drum. If you looked through a slit while the drum was spinning, you would actually see the horse ‘walk.’"

Animal Locomotion Plate 650 is on view in Exposure: Photos from the Vault from April 30 through October 31, 2010.